Warping records

Making people dance is what Vinyl does best. The seven-piece Bay Area band has spent the last nine years experimenting with its sound—an instrumental mix of Latin beats, R&B groove, funk, reggae and ska—but a new album and U.S. tour are proving that Vinyl really does have all the right moves.

Band member Jonathan Korty said that Vinyl formed out of a large collection of friends around Marin County in ‘95.

“We wanted to create danceable music for people,” Korty said from a cell phone in Breckenridge, Colo., where the band was touring before they hit Chico. Korty said that Vinyl was born of he and his friends’ mutual frustration with DJs picking up all the good gigs—hence the band’s name and the multiple connotations the members draw from it.

“The name Vinyl kind of means that we are the vinyl,” Korty said. “It also represents groove, like the grooves in a record, and a retro feel—real organs, real percussion, real horns.”

With Korty on Hammond organ, the rest of the expansive Vinyl is made of the typical guitar, bass and drums, in addition to a mini orchestra of saxophone, flute, trumpet, timbales and congas.

On stage, the band has developed a kind of telepathy that lets them improvise with the songs into unstructured territory without missing a beat. "It creates just the right blend of organization and chaos," Korty said. Drummer Lex Razon added, "[Vinyl] is a family-based thing. It’s about seeing the bigger picture—just having a good time, playing music and enjoying life."